Hello and welcome to F@CT Online! It's great that you've been able to join us today as we have fun together and learn about God.
At F@CT we love to praise God together with singing, actions and dancing. We hope this song gets you up and moving as we praise God together.
At church over the past few weeks, we have been learning all about generosity.
Our story today is about when Jesus showed amazing generosity. His friends and followers were feeling really hungry and he gave them not just enough to eat but enough that everyone was full up and there were leftovers.
This story starts with a little boy who was generous enough to share his packed lunch with Jesus. Although, I do wonder how much he wanted to eat his packed lunch ("Oh mum - not bread and fish again!") as he still had it left at teatime!
Let's watch this Lego video and find out more...
Wow! Jesus is amazing! He was so generous when he fed all those people.
When we follow God we follow Jesus' example of how to live so...
How can we be more generous?
Lizzie has been puzzling over this question and she decided to give Supergranny a call to ask for some help.
Activities
We can have lots of fun as we remember the story of when Jesus was so generous feeding all those people with only 5 loaves and 2 fish.
You can make your own racing game with fish cut out from newspaper and a book or a magazine to flap them along. Maybe you can race them with someone else in your family. Maybe you can make a track around the room and time to see how long it takes for you to move your fish along.
We had fun practising this one...
Prayer
Let's take a moment to be still and quiet to talk to God.
Supergranny told us all about the Fruit of the Spirit and how we can be more generous but it isn't always easy. Have a look at our Fruit of the Spirit picture. Is there one that you need to ask God to help you with this week?
Dear God
Thank you that you are so generous to us. You give us so many good things and love us so much.
Sorry when we aren't generous, when we put ourselves first.
Help us to remember your generosity and to be more generous with how we love others.
Amen
You could colour this in and put it up in your house to remind you about how we can be generous to others.
Hi everyone and welcome to F@CT Online! We are really excited today as we are not only having F@CT online but we are also having F@CT in church as well. We are feeling really thankful that we are able to meet together in different ways, still able to have fun and learn about God wherever we are.
As we are thinking about being thankful, that is today's theme as it is a time in the church called Harvest when we are thankful for all the things that God has given us.
Our Bible verse today comes from Psalm 107 verse 1
Thank the Lord because He is good.
His love continues forever.
What would our day look like if we were really thankful for all the amazing things we have?
Maybe it would look a bit like this...
When we are in church, we aren't allowed to sing at the moment but we are going to joining in with the actions to this song together. If you are at home, you can join in with the actions too and sing as loud as you like!
Let's praise God together.
Maybe you would like to make a Lego model of something that you are thankful for today?
Prayer
We are going to be making Thank You prayer posters today.
Who do you think made this prayer poster? It's someone who loves wearing colourful, stripey socks, has a large family and loves energetic sports likes skateboarding and football.
That's right! This is Supergranny's prayer poster. She is feeling thankful for her family, her favourite sports, her holiday to the beach, her favourite socks, Froggy Bear and her Bible, which helps her learn more about God.
You can cut pictures out from magazines or newspapers, draw your own pictures, or write words to make your prayer poster. You can put it up in your house and add things to it every day.
Let's finish today with one of our favourite songs. I find this one quite tricky to sing and do the actions at the same time, even when I have friends like these to help me remember which action comes next!
Let's join in and have fun remembering how AMAZING God is!
At Harvest, one of the ways we can thank God for the fantastic things He has given us is by sharing with others. Here are a couple of ways we can share with others at church at the moment.
Make Lunch
The Make Lunch team has been helping families in our town this year when lots of people have found it difficult to have enough food. This has been a fantastic way to show people that God cares about them. We can help Make Lunch by bringing in the items that they need to help others. This year, we have been asked if we can bring in these items...
Pasta
Pasta sauces
Nappies (size 3, 4 or 5)
Wet wipes
Toilet rolls
Tins of rice pudding
Ready Made Custard
Bottles of Squash
Tinned Vegetables
There will be a table in the foyer next to the office door in church for your donations. Please bring them as soon as possible.
Christmas may seem a little while away but shoeboxes are sent out at the beginning of November.
We hope you've had great fun today feeling thankful. We will be back here on the blog next week finding out about more adventures with The Story Keepers.
Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. Today we are looking at a story Jesus told called the Parable of the Good Samaritan and we've got a special guest too. Our video comes from 'The Diary of a Disciple: Luke's Story'. It's a great version of the book of Luke from the Bible told in the style of 'The Diary of a Wimpy Kid'. It's definitely a Christchurch Kids recommended read.
We're really excited to tell you that we have a special message from Supergranny. She has had some unexpected help this week.
Thanks Supergranny. We hope you are feeling better soon.
A challenge
Today we have a challenge for you. How can you think about your neighbour? Who is your neighbour? Is it the person who actually lives next door to you? Is it your friends and family? Could it be people living in another country?
In our parable today, the Samaritan stopped and helped someone who needed help. Can you think of a way to help someone today? Maybe you could use your talents we talked about with Supergranny a few of weeks ago. That could mean helping someone in your house. You might like to cook something for someone in your road. You could write a letter or draw a picture and pop it in the post.
Would you like a bigger challenge? Just like the man who needed help in the parable, there are lots of people around the world who need help. Poverty is a word that means people don't have enough. That means they don't have enough food or water. They might not have enough money for their children to go school. If you would like to find out how you can help people living in poverty, have a look at the website for Tearfund. It's a fantastic charity working alongside people around the world and making a big difference.
Jesus told his disciples that people would know we follow him if we love others. That's our colouring page today and you can download it here
We have a great Chat Mat about our parable today. You can download it here, colour it in and chat about it with your family.
Prayer
We are thinking of others today in our story and in our prayers. You can draw an outline of a person and write the names of people you would like to pray for. Spend a moment sitting quietly. If you start thinking about someone, that may mean God is asking you to pray for them. Spend a little while praying for the people you have written down. You could put your picture up on a wall and when you see it, you could say a prayer for those people.
We've got a great new song to sing today. It's called One Way Jesus. There are some fun actions to join in with so have a listen to the song and then have a go at joining in.
Thanks for popping by today. Don't forget you can still take part with our Prayer wall at church. We would love to see your prayers appear on the net. You can find out more about it here.
We hope you have a great week and we will see you again on Wiggle Wednesday.
Hi everyone and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. Today, we are going back to the parables Jesus told. We are looking at the parable of the 10 talents. Our story today comes from the book 'Diary of a Disciple'. It's a retelling of the book of Luke in the style of the 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'. It's a great read and at Xstream on Sunday mornings we have been completing a fun activity book based on it.
Here's our parable for today.
What was Jesus telling us when he told this story? We are all given talents (things we enjoy and are good at) from God. Did you notice that each servant wasn't given the same amount of coins? God gives us different talents from each other. The King in the story was pleased when the servants had used the coins and made them grow. God wants us to use our talents so that we can spread His love to others.
Who's this sharing her talents? It's Supergranny! She's sent us a message all about how we can share our talents too.
Thanks Supergranny!
While we are thinking about what our talents are, you could draw a picture of yourself and write down all the things you enjoy doing around it. You could add ideas of how to share your talents with others too.
We know we are all different and have different talents to share. There is a great guessing game that is based on the idea that we are all different. You can make your own version of this game!
Sometimes it's not an easy thing to use our talents to help others. We might be feeling really tired when God shows us someone we could help. Maybe we feel a bit nervous standing up for someone else and being a good friend to them. The great news is that God doesn't give us these gifts and then leave us on our own. He is always there to help us. Here is our colouring page for today that tells us that with Jesus' help we can do so many good things.
We are going to use our prayer time today to thank God for the special talents he has given us.
You can make an envelope from a heart shaped piece of paper (or wrapping paper) just like this...
Write down the things that you know you are good at and pop them into the envelope. You can ask God to show you new ways to use these talents to help other people and spread His love to others.
Our song today is all about how God created us. He even popped the freckles on our faces! Sing along and see if you can do the actions too.
Thanks for joining us today. We would love to see your crafts you have been making. You can email pictures to us using the instructions in the right hand column. We hope you have a great week and we will see you again for a dance on Wiggle Wednesday.
Hello and welcome to Christchurch Kids. We hope you've had a good week. We have a very special guest on the blog today and she is feeling a little bit worried.
Thanks Supergranny! Jesus had something to say about worries too.
God loves us and wants good things for us. He is helping those who need it through lots of amazing people. Have you heard stories about people helping each other recently? People are sharing their food. They are looking after their neighbours. There are lots of these stories happening around us. It can be difficult not to worry but we can trust God and we can ask him how we can be a help to others. Sometimes just a little hello to someone over the phone will make their day.
Jesus talked about how beautiful God makes the lilies. We can have a go at making our own lilies to help us remember the story today. If you don't have any coloured paper, you could draw your handprint on white paper and colour it in. If you don't have any pipecleaners, you could use straws or make a stem with rolled up paper. Here's a video to show us how to make the lilies.
In the Bible, God says that we can give all our worries to him and we know he cares about us. As we think about something we are worried about, we can think about giving it to God and imagine it floating away from us just like a balloon or a bubble. This is our colouring page today and you can download it here
We've got one of our favourite songs that we love singing with Supergranny. Our God is a great big God and he holds us in his hands...
We hope you have a great week and we would love to see your lilies, pictures of Supergranny or prayers. You can send us your pictures using the instructions in the right hand column. Join us later this week for a song and a dance on Wiggle Wednesday.
